'Technical' party in U.S. mirrors Russia

Post-Soviet Russia invented something called a "technical" party, which is a dummy rival party established by a stronger party (often the ruling party) to siphon off votes from rival parties, and/or uphold the appearance of democratic competition.
This NYT story is about one woman in Siberia from a technical party who went rogue. Not in a Palin way, but in a real way. She wanted her technical party to be a real opposition. And Putin's ruling party, United Russia, reacted fiercely to her impudence.
Somewhat similarly, we have in the U.S. today a technical party called the Tea Party, which was established and funded by Republicans like Dick Armey and the Koch brothers to create the appearance of dissent/competition in the GOP ranks and to distract conservatives from the fact that their party supported the Wall Street bailouts, which the rank-and-file opposed.
Time will tell if this technical party will rise up against its master, the GOP, and seek to become a real alternative. But signs so far are not encouraging. So far it looks like this tactic straight out of Vladimir Putin's playbook has worked as intended: it got the GOP re-elected.

In Siberia Race, Ruling Party Uses Clenched Fist

By Clifford J. Levy
December 10, 2010 | New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/europe/11impunity.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp